Miles
by Arica Lynn
Summary: Veronica and Logan reunite  and reunite again  years after graduating college. A companion piece to "Another Sad Love Song"


**Authors Note: **Hi. It's been a while, I know. It only took a couple of years, but I've finally managed to complete my companion piece to "Another Sad Love Song." As always this story was inspired by song, this time, Christina Perri's "Lovestrong" had a major impact, so I'm grateful for that. There's potentially another story... maybe two... to go along with this one, but I can't make any promises. Anyway, the usual disclaimers apply and um, read, review, and most of all enjoy. -a

**M****iles**

_I never thought that you would be the one to hold my heart_ – "Arms" **Christina Perri**

ARLINGTON VA – BROOKLYN NY – 233 MILES

The first time she shows up in New York, messy pony tail-dark jeans-leather jacket duffel thrown over her shoulder, he thinks she's a hallucination. She moves into his apartment without a word, drops the bag, and as if she's been there before, heads straight for the bedroom. He quickly snatches his phone from the kitchen counter as he follows her, in casual observance. The messenger on the phone pings and he glances at the message with a furrowed brow before typing a quick response. She's rummaging through a pile of his clothes in the corner, seemingly unaware of what's going on around her, but looks up long enough to see him hit send.

"Who's that?" she asks quickly, casually, before returning to her mission at hand. He thinks he hears a tinge of jealousy and contemplates lying, but really, what's the use?

"My girlfriend," he replies flatly. He thinks she pauses for just a second but he can't be sure. Before he's had time to even weigh her possible reactions against each other, he hears the zipper of her leather boots and she's standing before him, undressing. Once completely naked, he swears she takes just a tad longer than she needs to, before sliding an old, worn concert t-shirt of his, over her newly developed form. He swears she's filled out some, she seems softer, and yet everywhere he looks she's more toned than ever. it's a quick glimpse, but he's never needed a sneak peak to know that it's only a matter of time before his hands will be on her body and he'll be able to get an exact measure of all of her physical changes.

He's standing - grey sweatpants, no shirt, staring at her wordlessly when she crawls into his bed, pulls the duvet tight around her, and closes her eyes.

For a long moment he doesn't move, unsure of what she wants, what he wants, what she could possibly be doing there, how she even found him in the first place, when finally he notices her snoring softly and decides that he needs to leave the room to think. He pads his way into his living room over to his desk and boots up his laptop as he flops into the rich leather chair. He was scheduled to do some writing today. In fact, his publisher had insisted on it. But his mind is running a million miles a minute and he doesn't know how he's ever going to focus on his story of two fucked up kids coming to the realization that they belong to one another, when the real things is leaving traces of herself all over the next room.

He drops his head into his hands, raking his hands over his face and through his hair, before logging into his email. He opens up their last correspondence, searching for any hint of her eminent arrival, but of course there's none. Not that he thought he'd find anything – it's just not their style. In the nine months that they'd been emailing each other since they both kissed Neptune goodbye – literally and figuratively, their one rule had been no personal information. Sure she could talk about her training and the cases they were slowly letting her work on, and he could go on and on about the city and his book, but mentions of their lives, their routines, their feelings, were strictly forbidden. And now here she was, less than 100 feet away, asleep in his room, and real life be damned, it was the only thing he'd hoped for since boarding that plane.

He finally shuts the computer down when he resigns to the fact that he can't stop his head from spinning. He's read, and reread the same paragraph of his novel more than a dozen times, but the next sentence just won't come. After closing the cover of his laptop he decides that he needs to take matters into his own hands and makes his way back to the bedroom.

She's rolled over on her side now, curled up in the tiniest of balls, and finally she's the Veronica he remembers. He looks at the phone, having left it on his dresser the last time he was in the room and punches out another quick message to Kelly - the woman he'd likely never be seeing again - and then shuts it off before falling into bed. The movement jostles her momentarily and suddenly large crystal blue saucers are staring him directly in the eye.

"Logan..." his name comes out breathy as she snakes her arm around him, effectively pulling their bodies together. Before he knows what's going on, she's kissing him and all space and time seem to disappear as they lose themselves in the moment.

_You put your arms around me and I'm home__. – "Arms" _**Christina Perri**

She ends up staying for a week. They never leave his apartment, they never end up fully clothed, but he does make his deadline with his publisher and they do talk, and not just about the easy stuff, but the hard stuff too. About her ever present issue with authority and her struggles to fit in at the bureau. About the nightmares she still has of rooftops and the smell of gasoline and how she'd only passed her psych evaluation by the skin of her teeth. About his new hermit like disposition, his resolution to keep away from the booze, and the women who've managed to worm their way into his life - the ones he knows he'll never truly love. About his new found talent for writing, and his envy of, of all people, Dick Cassablancas who Logan has discovered through embossed lettering on a pale pink square of card stock - was getting married in the spring. They talked about his sister, whose visits had become more frequent and surprisingly pleasant. About Wallace, his success as a high school math teacher and the baby he and Jackie Cooke were expecting in the fall. And her father, his cancer scare and how unknown to Veronica, Logan had been keeping in touch.

They share secrets. Like how Mac was in Australia because she thought she may have found Duncan. And how Logan was published in the New Yorker under a pseudonym, and his story - about a fallen hero who changed the life of everyone he encountered, was about her dad, the only real hero he'd ever known. She tells him about how much she really hates the FBI, and all of their rules and red tape. He tells her about the false alarm that sent him to Neptune in the middle of the night because the bumbling police department thought that they had once and for all found the missing body of his late mother.

They laugh. They cry. They fight. They make love. But they don't make any promises. And they don't plan a repeat performance - just spend their week living for the moment, remembering every word, every touch, every glance. And when the week's over, she packs up her duffle, and leaves in the middle of the night with dry eyes, a heavy heart and more than one of his old shirts.

_I'm scared today, more than I told you I was yesterday__. Give me a moment to catch my breath, and hold me every second left. - "Miles" _**Christina Perri**

ALEXANDRIA VA – MANHATTAN NY – 237 MILES

The second time she shows up in New York is a year and a half later. They'd continued their correspondence and within weeks of the first visit, had started to let the personal things slip back into their emails once again. Begrudgingly, he gives her - of all things - relationship advice. And when a few weeks later she admits things aren't working out - he practically throws himself a party to celebrate what he's known all along.

When he shares with her the fact that all of his hard work had finally paid off and his first full length novel was going to print, he swears he can hear the excitement in her voice as he reads her email response over and over again. He basks in the glow of her praise and promises her her very own autographed copy.

The night of his first book party he's scheduled for a reading, a signing and a little soirée afterwards, and he arrives pissed off because traffic has made him late. When he gets to the book store, he's frazzled, nervous and more than a little ready for the night to be over even though it's barely began. He's being ushered in by his agent while his publicist talks at him so he barely notices the crowd. That's why it isn't until he looks up to begin the reading of his favorite chapter, the one he always thinks of in the back of his mind as "their" chapter, that he notices her in the back of the room, eagerly awaiting him to begin.

Remarkably he makes it through without a hitch and when he finishes his selection with the word epic, he doesn't have to look up to know she's staring right at him, mouth agape, his sentences having practically stripped her bare.

Then comes the signing and he isn't surprised when he finds her last in line. When she slides him her copy of his book, he opens it to the dedication page, instead of the title page as is customary. He wants her to know, although it's pretty hard to miss, that the book has very obviously been dedicated to her – for the support, for the acceptance, for the love. And as he starts to scribble just below the small veranda font - For Ronnie - he knows exactly what he wants to write.

V - no one writes songs about the ones that come easy - L.

He closes the book, slides it back towards her and that's when their eyes meet. He knows he's struck a chord with her when he sees her blink back a tear. He hopes that deep down she's known all along that it's been their story that he's been trying to tell. He's been afraid of publishing this book since the moment he started writing it and after the success of his short stories in the New Yorker, began to create buzz, he knew that the pressure was on, which only made his anxiety worse. But when his publishers sent him an advance of the final manuscript he'd felt a catharsis like nothing he's ever experienced before. He's proud of his work. Proud of the story he's been able to tell. And more than anything, he's so beyond happy that she's there to share this moment with him. He wants to tell her that, and a million things come to mind, but for some reason he just can't find the words.

They enter the party being held in his honor holding hands. He introduces her merely as Veronica and ignores the glances that he gets from the members of his management team who know just what Ronnie represents. It's the kind of night he's only dreamed of. Lately he's been content, but today he's genuinely happy. They're having the kinds of moments he'd never thought possible and he doesn't want it to end. This time she leaves in the morning, but not while he sleeps, they hadn't done much of that, and when she walks out the door, this time, he's not afraid to say I love you.

_I hope that you see right through my walls. I hope that you cat__ch me 'cause I'm already falling. "Arms" _**Christina Perri**

BROOKLYN NY – ALEXANDRIA VA – 240 MILES

The third time, he comes to her. Without notice or pretense, he arrives on her doorstep, hoping with everything he has in him that she will be able to accept him as the broken little boy he's been trying to break free from for so many years now.

He'd gotten the call only 5 hours prior. When he saw Keith's name appear on his phone's display, he was pleasantly surprised. He'd never admit this to anyone, but he looked forward to his occasional chats with the patriarch mars. It had surprised him; the first time they spoke, how much he needed someone like Keith in his life. So much so that he looked forward to their talks and even initiated a call or two in the last couple of months. But this conversation was different; this conversation took a turn that quickly left him breathless. They'd found his mother's body, only this time, Keith had promised him, there were no mistakes, it was for real. There wasn't much left, by way of identification, but dental records and a bone fracture that they were able to trace back to a broken wrist his mother had suffered in her teens, confirmed what he knew even Keith himself never really wanted to believe… nearly a decade later, Lynn Echolls was officially pronounced dead.

They didn't actually need him to come to Neptune. Not right away at least. But Keith had wanted him to know, wanted to be the one to give him the news personally. He suggested that Logan give Cliff, who was still Logan's long suffering attorney, a call, to start making burial arrangements.

He did as he was told, speaking to Cliff with the promise to be in Neptune by morning. Packed a bag, haphazardly with the bare essentials, and hailed a cab to JFK. Ten minutes at the airline ticket counter and he was five seconds away from booking a flight to Neptune when he heard the boarding announcement for a commuter plane to DC and knew immediately what he had to do. In seconds he switched his arrangements and was jogging through the terminal headed towards the only solace he knew.

_I won't make it alone, I need something to hold__. "Miles" _**Christina Perri**

He arrives on her doorstep to discover she isn't home. He's not surprised, except she always seems to appear when he needs her most. In a tiny corner of his mind, he'd hoped that by some miracle, her regularly scheduled day off was a Thursday. No such luck. However, her neighborhood seemed pleasant enough and the wicker chair in the corner of her porch awfully inviting, so he makes himself comfortable, prepared to wait for however long it takes.

Luckily he has business to tend to. As a last minute grab he'd snatched his laptop from the couch before heading out the door, which means at the very least, he can do some work on his next book. Any distraction at this point he figures, will be good.

He works for nearly an hour, lost in the words on the screen when he notices someone approaching. He squints in the sunlight, thinking, hoping that it's Veronica but when he makes out the form headed his way he realizes that while there is a woman approaching him, she's a bit smaller and definitely a whole hell of a lot older then the pint size FBI agent he waits for.

"Can I help you young man?" the woman asks as she bounds slowly up the steps and across the wooden planks.

Logan stands, eying her suspiciously when she stops, just short of halfway and stares at him with a look of recollection.

"I..." he clears his throat, it's been a while since he's said anything out loud. "I'm looking for Veronica."

"Works 'til five today," the woman begins as she fishes a set of keys out of her pocket. She takes another long look at him, narrowing her eyes as she stares him up and down. "You must be Logan," she continues nodding her head and she finally places him. Logan stares down at her taken aback, _who is this woman? Where did she come from?_ And why the hell was she opening Veronica's door. "I recognize you from the pictures," she offers by way of explanation. "I'm Millie," she adds extending her hand. Logan takes it gently. "Every day at three, I feed the cat. You're more than welcome to come inside and wait."

Logan doesn't move, just stands, jaw open, as this stranger opens the door without even a backwards glance.

"Well come on now," she says as she steps into the house. "Don't want to let all of the warm air in."

He follows her into the foyer but stops in the doorway as Millie makes her way into the living room. The room is modestly decorated, not that he expected anything flashy. Immediately he's surprised at how at home he feels just standing there, in the doorway taking in the soft suede sofa set, the flat screen T.V. and the shiny pine end tables.

He hasn't moved a muscle when Millie comes back into the room followed by a very white and very fluffy cat.

"Weevil, meet Logan," Millie says as the cat jumps onto the love seat. Logan practically chokes on the name but once he's recovered, takes that as his cue to actually enter the room. He sits down gingerly on the seat, closer to the chair's arm than the cat that's looking at him like he's somehow cosmically connected to his namesake.

Millie sits on the couch across form him and it's obvious from the way she fiddles with her hands and the hem of her shirt that she's not comfortable with silences. Unfortunately for her, he spends most of his time in silence, alone, and has a hard time coping with those who need constant attention so he does what he knows best. He attempts to bail.

"Uh... where's the bathroom?"

"Down the hall and to the right dear," Millie offers with a smile. And as Logan makes his way towards the hallway, he notices that Weevil (he's definitely going to have to ask Veronica about that one) has moved to cuddle next to Millie and neither looks like they're going anywhere anytime soon.

Logan makes his way down the hall with tunnel vision. When he enters the bathroom, he sits on the closed lid of the toilet and takes a deep breath. It's overwhelming. The neighbor, the house, his mother, everything, and he can't breathe. So he does exactly what his last year of therapy has taught him. Sit still, clear your mind, take a deep breath, and the rest will come. And it does, after he's sure he hears Millie loitering outside the door. He laughs to himself, she probably thinks he passed out, so he quickly splashes some water on his face and leaves the room.

That's when he notices the pictures. They line the walls of the hallway, 8, maybe 10 large black and whites of his past. Veronica and Lily, Lily himself and Duncan, the fab 4, Veronica and Wallace, Keith and Backup...picture after picture like a history book. And then the last shot. It's he and Veronica and it literally stops him in his tracks. It's a moment he remembers happening, but not a photo he remembers taking. They're together, dancing, if he remembers correctly, at the Sadie Hawkins dance their senior year. They weren't together then. They were barely speaking at this time in their live, but this picture, it says it all. They're standing not even an inch apart, eyes lost in one another and Logan thinks that if any image at any point in time could encompass how he feels about her, this is it. Staring at the unframed canvas, he's immediately brought back to that moment, that day. The image is so arresting. Not only in the way it captures the moment so very perfectly, but also in the way that he thinks that this may have been the turning point in their relationship, the moment when he realized that no matter what happened in life, he was always going to care for his first loves best friend.

"Logan, are you okay?" Millie asks from the other room, breaking his revive.

He quickly turns away from the photo and makes his way back into the living room.

"Yeah," he says and sits back down. "Long flight," he as he e notices a copy of his book, the first one, lying open on the table in front of him. He stares for a moment and then quickly looks away, hoping Millie didn't see.

"It's a beautiful story," she offers and he turns to her, caught.

"Thank you," he says simply.

"I used to love to read," she adds with a sigh. "But my eyes have gotten so bad lately that Veronica reads to me. We have a standing appointment every Tuesday at 6," she smiles. "As long as I bring the manicotti, she promises at least a chapter of her time," she looks down at the book and then up and him again. "You just told her that you were epic," she adds for good measure.

"I uh..." Logan stutters, slightly taken aback. Veronica and Logan have never really spoken of how much truth was weaved into his fiction. Not that he'd needed to spell it out for her. She lived it too.

"She's a good girl," Millie continues. "God knows she's aggressive and awfully stubborn to boot, but she's mighty worth it," Millie finishes with conviction.

Logan smiles, his first real smile all day.

"Preaching to the choir" he adds with a chuckle. And with that Millie stands and makes her way around the coffee table and towards the door.

"I'm going to get going," she says as she starts to head out. "She shouldn't be too long after five so you've only got about an hour of waiting, make yourself at home," and with that, she's gone.

_Please don't stand so close to me. __I'm having trouble breathing. "Distance" _**Christina Perri**

When Veronica arrives home, only a little over an hour later, Logan's asleep on the couch. When he awakens to see her face peering down at him, he thinks he may have died and gone to heaven and then it all hits him like a ton of bricks and before he knows it, he's sitting in her arms sobbing. The weight of everything has finally consumed him and he just can't stop the tears from falling as the dry heaves wrack his body. When she holds him, it feels even worse. He's reminded of all of the other times she's been there to pick up the pieces and he hates that he feels so weak when he's around her, even if she's always been the strongest person he's ever known. So he cries, because he's sad, because he's broken, because he's more raw than he's ever been. He cries because he finally realizes just how much he needs her and they're still worlds apart.

_I give you everything I am – all of my broken heart beats. Until I know you understand. "Distance" _**Christina Perri**

When he wakes up he's groggy and disoriented and it takes him a moment to get his bearings and then he smells her - the familiar scent of marshmallows and promises that always lingers after her a little longer than he'd like it to. And that's when he remembers... Keith's call, his detour to see her, his conversation with her neighbor, and the sobbing. He's sheepish as sits up, and scans the room for her. She's not there, but as he rubs his hands over his face and through his hair, he hears her milling about in the other room.

As if reading his mind, she enters the room, cell phone clutched to her ear. She seems him and smiles sadly before saying. "I'll call you when we get in," and hangs up.

"Who was that?" he asks, still a bit groggy.

"My dad," she sits down next to him. "I was just going to wake you. "We're on the red eye to Neptune."

"So he told you?"

"Yeah, after you fell asleep I was so worried and Millie didn't really have any answers, she just told me that you were here…I didn't know what else to do."

"How long have I been asleep?"

"A couple of hours."

He runs his hands through his hair again, inhaling deeply and then dropping his head with the exhale.

"I'm sorry," he adds with a frown.

"Don't be," she says taking his hand. "I'm glad you came."

_O__ne day we will realize how hard it was, how hard we tried and how our hearts made it out alive. "Miles" _**Christina Perri**

ALEXANDRIA VA – NEPTUNE CA – 2,692 MILES

She doesn't let go until they arrive in Neptune and even then it's only for mundane things like digging out her phone, or when they part to use the bathroom. If he didn't know better he'd think it was pity, but he can tell it's more than that, that something has finally shifted, and for the first time, maybe it's been the shift they need, the one that's finally going to lead them in the right direction.

Keith meets them at the airport and he's glad for the distraction. He drives them to the sheriff's station explaining the protocol all the way but Logan's not really listening, he can't, it's all too surreal. It's been a decade since Lynn's alleged swan dive off the Coronado Bridge. All the while, deep down, he's known she's gone, but he's never had to actualize it, never had to really believe it. And he's been fine with that, in fact, it's what he's preferred. But now that's he's staring the whole thing in the face, he wishes with every fiber in his being that it all could have stayed unknown. He doesn't like how the truth is making him think, making him feel. He's just going through the motions as Keith begins to read him the report, passing over papers for him to sign every now and then. He's barely aware of the pen in his hand, how it feels as he mechanically scribbles his name, instead his driving force is the vice grip Veronica holds on his free hand. And when it's over he's almost taken aback by how relieved he feels, how glad he is for this to finally be the end.

When they're done, Keith takes him to his house for dinner with Alicia and a couple of times he almost cracks a smile. Most of the night feels out of body, but he's happy for the distraction. He's beyond relieved when Veronica asks Keith to drive them to the Grande. Not only because he doesn't have to awkwardly spend the night at his sometimes girlfriends fathers house, but because he know that that means she intends on spending the night with him and that means more to his shattered being than she'll ever know. But the thing about the Grand is, it's a weird place. There's a lot of history there, history he doesn't care to remember and would never dare to repeat. Neither one of them have a ton of fond memories of the place, but he's heard that they've remodeled in the past couple of years and since it's really the only decent place in town, neither says anything as they enter through the revolving doors.

Thankfully the new design has left the hotel pretty much unrecognizable. As they check in, Veronica admits to having stayed there a few months prior, the last time she visited Keith, and there's an obvious pride in her voice when she says she managed the whole experience without any nightmares.

That night they spend a lot of time talking. At least that's how it starts. It ends with them naked and sweaty in an oversized king bed, but he's more than okay with that.

He realizes that life's too short to dwell on any of his current circumstances. Why he came to her, why she's stayed with him, why they keep ending up in each other's arms. He's finally gotten to the point in life where he's just decided to embrace it, enjoy it even, because each time they end up like this they learn a little more about the new versions of themselves.

They discuss a lot of things. Things they haven't spoken of since they first started seeing each other 3 years ago. Things like failures, accomplishments, surprises and scars – the physical and the mental. They spend a lot of time relearning each other's bodies inch by inch. Veronica focuses a lot more on Logan, the curve of his shoulders, slope of his back, than she ever has in the past and he can't complain about this new sensual side of her. As she's tracing one particularly gash on his shoulder with her tongue, he admits that contrary to popular assumption, that particular puckering of the skin was actually from the diving board at the Neptune Country Club, and a night when he and Duncan had been having a little too much fun, while the smaller scar, the one a little further down, just above his rib cage is from the time that Aaron hit him so hard and so repeatedly with a nine iron that it not only broke skin but also cracked a rib.

She says that every time he shares one of these stories with her, she's breaking him down a little bit more, and he argues that she's helping to put him back together. It's in that moment that he realizes that there's a lot of give and take with them lately. And he thinks that maybe that's how it's supposed to be. Maybe he can finally start to trust her, or at least trust himself when he's with her – which is saying a lot considering where they've been in the past. He hopes that it's a sign that they're maturing because he needs to know that something in his life is moving forward instead of taking one giant leap after giant leap back.

He thinks sometimes that maybe they've turned into a cliché and it doesn't bother him as much as it probably should.

Some of the things she admits to him in the wee hours of the morning make him think that they're almost there - that they're only millimeters away from actually finding each other once again. But when they wake up in the morning and he discovers that she's on the first plane out, he starts to second guess himself. It isn't until she kisses him goodbye, holding on just a moment longer than she should, that he thinks maybe next time they separate will be the last time he ever has to say goodbye to her again.

_Don't count the miles, count the "I love yous" "Miles" _**Christina Perri**


End file.
